Saturday, October 26, 2013

Air Force Drops God; Army and Christian Terrorists

When atheists complained that the Air Force Academy oath ended with the words "so help me God," the Academy dutifully responded within minutes to the atheists, and then within a few days, the Academy announced that the phrase is now optional. However, that wasn't enough for the atheists who said it must be dropped entirely, or they'll sue.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Army has temporarily stopped all troop briefings on extremist organizations after myriad media reports from soldiers that they were being instructed to consider Christians as the worst terrorists.

“. . . Army leaders [shall] cease all briefings, command presentations or training on the subject of extremist organizations or activities until that program of instruction and training has been created and disseminated.”-- Col. David Patterson, Jr., Army spokesman

Last week, the Colorado Springs Independent newspaper published a photograph of a poster at the academy which included the oath. The newspaper then forwarded the photo to MRFF President Mikey Weinstein.

Late Friday morning, officials said they had reviewed the Cadet Honor Oath and decided to make the final clause optional, in the 'spirit of determining a way ahead that enables all to be true to their beliefs.'

In 1984, the Cadet Wing voted to add an "Honor Oath," for all cadets to take and it is administered to fourth class cadets (freshmen) when they are formally accepted into the Wing at the conclusion of Basic Cadet Training.

The Honor Code is a vital part of cadets’ development as military professionals. It also represents a broader aspect of ethical maturity which will serve them throughout their lives. As the bearers of the public trust, both as cadets and as officers, it is the Honor Code which helps build a personal integrity able to withstand the rigorous demands placed upon them

. . . But Weinstein said nothing short of eliminating the “so help me God” language from the oath is acceptable. Making it optional would not be good enough, he said, because airmen who chose not to say it would feel pressure.

“The Air Force Academy took the cowardly route,” Weinstein said after the announcement. “From our perspective, it still creates a tremendous amount of unconstitutional turmoil ... for anyone who is a religious objector.”

Weinstein pledged earlier in the week to bring a lawsuit against the academy if the religious language is not dropped entirely from the oath.

Weinstein graduated from the academy in 1977, and spent 10 years in the Air Force as a judge advocate general, and more than three years as legal counsel for the Reagan administration. His two sons, son-in-law, and daughter-in-law also graduated from the academy. Weinstein, who is Jewish, said his younger son experienced anti-Semitic prejudice while attending the academy in 2004, after the movie “The Passion of the Christ” was released. He said cadets were being pressured to see the movie. He founded MRFF later that year.

The Secretary of the Army has ordered military leaders to halt all briefings on extremist organizations that labeled Evangelical Christian groups as domestic hate groups. The shutdown comes just four days after I reported exclusively about a briefing at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby that labeled the American Family Association [AFA] as a domestic hate group.

Last week soldiers at Fort Hood were warned that participating in or donating money to evangelical Christian groups or Tea Party groups could result in military punishment.

So where did the Army instructors get their talking points?

“None of these slides were produced by the Army, but by soldiers who included information found during an Internet search,” Patterson told me.

“The Army does not maintain or publish a list of organizations considered extremist; and after a similar incident earlier this year, commanders and other leaders were cautioned that they should not use lists of ‘extremists,’ ‘hate groups,’ ‘radical factions’ or the like compiled by any outside non-governmental groups or organizations for briefings, command presentations, or as a shortcut to determining if a group or activity is considered to be extremist.”

But the Army does provide a list of organizations that do list groups like the AFA and FRC as domestic hate groups – specifically the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the SPLC is featured in the military’s Equal Opportunity Advisor Student Guide.

The Camp Shelby episode also drew the attention of Congress, where Reps. Doug Lamborn, Steve Scalise, John Fleming, Joseph Pitts and Tim Huelskamp joined in a letter to the Pentagon stating: “This most recent mislabeling of a Christian organization reflects what appears to be a troubling trend of religious intolerance in the military.”

Tim Wildmon, president of AFA, one of the country’s largest Christian ministries, said: “We are probably going to be taking legal action. The Army has smeared us. They’ve defamed the American Family Association.”

AFA’s [Brian] Fischer suggested that if the “military wasn’t headed by a commander in chief who is hostile to Christian faith, these allegations would be laughed off every military base in the world.”

The Obama administration’s attacks on conservatives date back to just weeks after he took office.

Judicial Watch, a government corruption monitor, said it obtained records regarding the “preparation and presentation of training materials on hate groups or hate crimes distributed or used by the Air Force.”

The teaching claimed: “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”

A soldier who attended the Oct. 17th [pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood] told me the counter-intelligence agent in charge of the meeting spent nearly a half hour discussing how evangelical Christians and groups like the American Family Association were “tearing the country apart.”

The soldier told me he fears reprisals and asked not to be identified. He said there was a blanket statement that donating to any groups that were considered a threat to the military and government was punishable under military regulations.

The soldier said they were also told that the pro-life movement is another example of “radicalization.”

Another soldier who attended the briefing alerted the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. That individual’s recollections of the briefing matched the soldier who reached out to me.

And while a large portion of the briefing dealt with the threat evangelicals and the Tea Party pose to the nation, barely a word was said about Islamic extremism, the soldier said.